A journey
We left home a little after 7am for an 8 am blood draw. Given COVID-19 traffic, this was overkill!
It’s the first visit with my new oncologist. (Dr. Salazar moved to be near her grandchildren.) She seemed warm. She’s ordered another Dexa scan for me to take when I can get it scheduled.
The Food and Drug Administration has approved Piqray (alpelisib) tablets to treat men and postmenopausal women whose advanced breast cancer is hormone receptor (HR)-positive, human epidermal growth factor receptor 2 (HER2)-negative and PIK3CA-mutated.
Piqray is to be used in combination with the FDA-approved endocrine therapy fulvestrant. The PIK3CA-mutated, advanced or metastatic breast cancer (as detected by an FDA-approved test) is indicated following progression on or after an endocrine-based regimen.
Continue reading “FDA approves new drug to treat advanced breast cancer”
After the initial breast cancer diagnosis, days are crammed with tests and your brain can become overloaded with what seems like a never-ending list of decisions about treatment. The patient is the center of a large and complex health care team. But once those initial, traditional treatments are history – surgery, chemotherapy, radiation – it’s time to cope and recover from side effects.
Some side effects are less well-known by lay people (or even other doctors, such as cardiac specialists) and may be less well-described by the care team.
One of these side effects is breast cancer–related lymphedema. A form of secondary lymphedema, it is a debilitating byproduct of breast cancer treatment (lymph node removal, either sentinel node biopsy or axillary, and radiation therapy).
Continue reading “Surviving breast cancer treatment: lymphedema”
Currently no U.S. Food and Drug Administration–approved therapy can reestablish lymphatic circulation after a patient develops lymphedema. Up to 10 million people in the United States and more than 100 million around the world have lymphedema.
A phase II clinical trial at Stanford University School of Medicine tested whether the drug ubenimex, a leukemia treatment used in Japan, can spur the growth of new lymphatic vessels for patients with secondary leg lymphedema. It was the “first pharmaceutical company-sponsored trial for a medical treatment of lymphedema.”
Continue reading “Replumbing the lymphatic system with a pill: still a dream”
Zometa is (a necessary) evil.
I got my first infusion on Friday April 22; I had to have some IV fluids because blood work showed slight dehydration on Thursday (migraine on Wednesday = sleeping much of day = not enough fluids ingested).
Very tired on Saturday, which got more pronounced as day went on. Hit a wall at the ballet Saturday evening. Slight nausea. Chills.
Continue reading “Zometa, an adjunctive breast cancer treatment”